


Home is wherever I'm with you

by juliasets



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Case Fic, Florida, Gen, Ghosts, References to My Favorite Murder, Sam's love of serial killers, Season/Series 14, Why does it always have to be Florida
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-23
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-09-25 12:45:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17121614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juliasets/pseuds/juliasets
Summary: Sam and Dean take a break from gearing up to go after Michael and find themselves on a ghost hunt in Florida. But the bigger mystery for Sam is why Dean was so insistent on the hunt at all.





	Home is wherever I'm with you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TammyRenH](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TammyRenH/gifts).
  * Translation into Русский available: [Дом везде, где я с тобой](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17300732) by [TModestova](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TModestova/pseuds/TModestova)



> Written as part of the [SPN J2 Xmas gift exchange](https://spn-j2-xmas.livejournal.com/) for TammyRenH. It’s always hard to write gifts for people who write gorgeous fics themselves! I used your prompt “What makes a house (or bunker) a home” and then went a little sideways with it, but it still came out about 90% fluff. Hope you like it!
> 
> Takes place between 14x08 (“Byzantium”) and 14x09 (“The Spear”). I’m imagining that it took them a few weeks to get the pieces in place before 14x09.

“Hey, Riley?”

“Yeah, Chief?”

“Sharon’s team needs some backup in Mobile, you think you can help out?” Sam looks up from his laptop. Riley says yes, but at the same time there’s movement from the other end of the map room that catches Sam’s eye.

Because it’s Dean. Sam could pick his brother out of a crowd while drunk, stoned, and concussed. Even in a bunker full of hunters, Sam’s eyes can’t help but be drawn to Dean.

Even if all Sam sees is Dean’s back as he retreats from the main room.

Sam makes sure that Riley has the information he needs and then chases after his wayward brother.

He’s not sure what’s going on with Dean. He’s been distant since they freed him from Michael. Sure, he’s no longer hiding away in his room, but he’s not exactly mingling with the team. It’s out of character for Dean, who could make friends with a brick wall. There’s a tension in him that didn’t exist before Michael.

It doesn’t help that Sam’s been running himself ragged acting as the second on a number of hunts. First there was the whole mess with Jack dying, something Sam doesn’t like to think about. And ever since Cas returned from heaven with intel on Michael, they’ve been working nonstop to get all the pieces in place to take the archangel down. Ketch is scoping out the mansion of an eccentric Hungarian millionaire who might have a Hyperbolic Pulse Generator. Garth is putting out feelers in the werewolf community, trying to find some who are working with Michael.

Needless to say, they’ve been busy. Sam’s barely had a chance to say three words to Dean all week.

Sam finds him in the kitchen. When Dean was gone the kitchen was often bustling with hunters as they cooked for the dozen or so people usually present in the bunker. Lots of chili and stew, big portions. Ever since Dean’s come back, though, Sam rarely sees anyone else there at the same time as Dean. It’s hard to tell if that’s thanks to his brother’s somewhat unwelcoming demeanor or if they have some lingering fear of Michael. Sam will have to ask around a bit, make sure no one is holding any grudges.

Dean’s not cooking anything at the moment. Sam tries not to be disappointed that he’s cradling a finger of whiskey at ten in the morning.

“Hey,” Sam ventures.

Next to Dean on the table is a stack of paperwork in a gray Men of Letters folder. Dean slides it across the wooden surface. “Found a case.”

Sam steps up and pages through the printed off news articles and hacked police records. String of strangling deaths, probably a spirit. “Ghost? I can put someone on it.” He wakes his tablet and brings up the map with all of his hunters’ locations. Charlie helped him develop it. It incorporates live GPS data from everyone’s phones along with the locations of known or suspected hunts. Very cool.

“What?” Dean says, snatching the file back from Sam. “No way, I’m not giving this hunt up to some amateur.”

“They’re not…” Sam starts, but abandons that line of argument. Dean’s not entirely wrong. Most hunters are amateurs compared to them. Besides, going to head to head with Dean is usually the wrong tack.

He doesn’t know why Dean’s so possessive of the case.

Quickly, he runs through what he’s just read. “Wait, did that say Richard Edward Williams?”

“Yup,” Dean responds, all carefully studied nonchalance. Sam gestures with his hands— _gimme_ —and Dean hands the file back.

“So this spirit might be a little more serious,” Sam says. Three women are dead, matching Williams’ type. It’ll probably be a quick salt and burn. They’ve got a few days to kill while waiting for Sam’s plans for Michael to coalesce into something useful.

“Might be,” Dean says, taking another indifferent sip of his whiskey.

Sam rolls his eyes, not buying it for a second. But, fine, he can play along. “I can grab my things, be ready in twenty?”

Dean downs his drink and sets the tumbler down heavily. “You’re on.”

 

* * *

 

The deaths are in Florida, of course. That’s where Richard Edward Williams killed nine women back in the 1970s before being stabbed to death in prison.

“Of course it’s Florida,” Dean gripes, slouched across the driver’s seat, his elbow hanging outside the window. It’s nice enough in the Florida panhandle that they’ve got the windows down, taking in the fresh air while they can.

Sam isn’t inclined to disagree. Despite the nice winter weather, he and Florida have a contentious relationship.

“You wanna hit up Disney?” Dean suggested. They were headed to just outside Orlando.

“You think there’s a hunt there?”

“There’s no way that ‘It’s a Small World’ ride isn’t haunted.”

Sam laughs. “You know, I heard a rumor that they don’t let anyone die in Disney World.”

“Yeah? How? Deal with a reaper?”

“What? No. They just don’t pronounce you dead until they leave the park.”

“Oh, so they lie.”

“Happiest place on Earth?” A beat. “Of course they’re lying.”

Dean laughs and Sam can’t help the warm feeling in his stomach. Dean’s okay.

 

* * *

 

Dean’s not okay.

“What the hell was that?” Sam yells as they stomp away from the house.

“Shut up, Sam,” Dean growls.

“No, really, Dean. What the hell?” They reach the Impala and Sam glares at his brother across the top of it.

“Get in,” Dean says, before climbing into the driver’s side.

The stubborn part of Sam doesn’t want to follow any orders right now, but refusing will just make things worse, so he opens the door and takes his seat. He barely has the door closed before Dean’s pulling away from the curb.

Dean had found the case based on a news article with the headline “Fan of Popular Podcast Found Dead.” The headline hadn’t immediately registered to Sam when Dean showed him the folder of evidence, but it turned out she’d been a fan of My Favorite Murder. Sam’s listened to a few episodes here and there. The victim, Alicia Brooks, had just bought some serial killer memorabilia, a letter written by Richard Edward Williams to some other woman. The fact that a fan of serial killers ended up dead under mysterious circumstances was enough to pique the interest of some websites, who wrote articles with much buzzier headlines. “‘Murderino’ Mysteriously Murdered” was in particularly bad taste. “Victim of Violent Death Was Serial Killer Groupie” wasn’t much better.

That wouldn’t have been so unusual, but there had been two other deaths of young women in the same week. Orlando had its share of murder, but that was statistically significant. It helped that all three of the women fit Williams’ preferred type: young and white with curly brown hair.

Thus, their investigation.

They’d gone to interview the first victim’s husband to find out more about the letter. Mr. Brooks was happy to hand it over to their FBI personas as ‘evidence’. He was under investigation himself by the police, given that they had no other leads. Anything to clear his name.

They’d just wrapped up and Sam was placing the letter in a plastic ‘evidence’ bag (really just a Dollar Store knock off Ziploc) when Dean had asked, mostly casually, if the husband had any idea why Alicia was into violent sociopaths.

The husband, naturally, had taken offense and defended his wife’s hobby. There were thousands of women who listened to that podcast, and plenty of others who found true crime interesting.

It devolved from there. By the time Dean was blaming the victim for bringing this on herself because she “got off on murder,” Sam was already dragging him out the door.

The car rumbles beneath them as they head back to the motel.

Sam opens his mouth to try and broach the subject, but Dean senses the movement and cuts him off. “Don’t start.”

“So we’re not going to talk about this?”

“Nothing to talk about.”

“Yeah? That why you went full Johnnie Cochran on the vic’s husband back there?”

Dean smirks. “I think it actually makes me Marcia Clark. I always thought she was a fox.”

Sam ignores the deflection. “C’mon, Dean. Talk to me.”

“Sam. Drop it.”

“Well, do you have something to say to me, then? You got a problem with my ‘serial killer fetish’?”

“What? No.” Dean’s hands clench around the steering wheel before he carefully rolls his shoulders back, putting up his usual façade. His voice, when he speaks again, is calm and even. “Besides, you were always weird, Sammy.”

It’s clear that Sam won’t be getting anything else out of him tonight.

Sam hates when Dean puts his walls up like that. Dean offered him a few glimpses into what he was dealing with immediately after coming back from being possessed by Michael, but since then he seemed to think that he’d said everything that needed to be said on the subject.

This was just another piece of evidence that Dean wasn’t okay.

Still, he wasn’t gonna get anywhere tonight. And they have the letter now. Sam pulls the document out of his suit pocket and takes it out of the plastic bag. It’s on lined notebook paper, still with the fringe on the left side where it had been torn off the spiral. He unfolds it. It’s from Williams to a woman who wrote to him while he was in prison, back in the 70s. His handwriting was atrocious.

Letters are an unusual haunted item. On a hunch, Sam takes a small flashlight out of his pocket. He clicks it on and a blue light washes over the paper—it has a blacklight bulb.

Bright spots light up on the paper.

Sam clicks the light off. No discoloration where the spots were. It isn’t blood.

“Oh, gross,” he says, gagging. He shoves the letter back in the plastic bag and rubs his hands on his jeans.

“What’s that?”

“I think I figured out why Williams is haunting the letter. It was to one of his fans.”

Dean puts it together quickly. “Oh, wow. DNA, huh?”

“I need a shower.”

Dean laughs and the tension in the car dissipates. “Yeah, well, at least we can just burn the damn thing and be done with this. Easy hunt.”

Sam wants to tell him not to jinx it, but he doesn’t want to spoil the mood. He holds his tongue and his worries. They’ve got time.

 

* * *

 

Of course it’s not that easy. Sam should’ve really told Dean not to jinx it.

When they got back to the motel yesterday Sam threw the letter in the metal garbage can, doused it with a little lighter fluid, and threw a lit match in. They’d considered the job done and ordered Thai food before watching TV. It was getting close to Christmas, so Dean spent a good hour flipping through channels searching for Die Hard before Sam finally got fed up and pulled it up on his laptop.

And then they’d woken up to morning news covering the murder of a young woman overnight.

It had to have happened hours after they burned the letter.

Which is why they’re now headed up State Highway 441 to Raiford, Florida and the Florida State Prison, where Richard Edward Williams was imprisoned until he was killed by his fellow inmates. He’s buried in the prison cemetery.

The drive up the highway takes a few hours, but they still find themselves needing to kill some time before darkness. Not that there’s a high chance of anyone catching them digging up his grave. They scope out the graveyard and it’s small and forlorn, surrounded by a chain-link fence and dense trees. Dean’s happy enough to spend his afternoon holding down a table in a local diner. Their pie is rhubarb.

Once it’s dark they park just off the road, cover the Impala with a tarp, and hike through those trees to the cemetery. Dean goes over the fence first and Sam throws him the duffel of supplies before following.

The graves are marked with tiny metal plaques, painted white. It takes a while to find Williams. “R E WILLIAMS, 153920, DOD 6 22 81”. It’s not much of a memorial. Sam thinks it fitting for a man who killed at least nine women while alive, and four more as a ghost.

Digging up graves is hard work, but at least it’s warm Florida soil. Sam sends up a quick thanks that this hunt isn’t anywhere north of the Mason-Dixon line. It’s a brisk fifty degrees tonight, but the day had been a balmy 70.

They dig for the first hour in silence.

Physical exertion usually loosens Dean’s tongue a bit. It’s a trick that Sam’s figured out after years of trial and error. It’s why Dean sometimes opens up after tough hunts.

Is it unethical to use grave digging as a way to pry into his brother’s state of mind? Possibly. But it’s for a good cause.

“You okay?” Sam ventures, driving his shovel deep into the ground. They’re a good few feet in, making good progress.

Dean sighs. “You ever gonna stop asking that?”

“Probably not.”

Silence stretches between them for another few shovelfuls of dirt. Sam thinks Dean’s just going to leave it there, but then he speaks into the dark. “Not everything is about Michael.”

That throws Sam a bit, but he knows better than to make a big deal out of it. “Okay.”

“You know what? Never mind,” Dean says, walls coming down hard.

Sam takes the hint and backs off.  “Did you know that Ted Bundy was imprisoned here?”

Dean snorts. “You wanna dig him up too?”

“He was cremated.”

“The fact that you know that….” Dean says, trailing off. But he’s smiling again. Sam can’t see it in the deep shadows cast by the lamp they’re digging by, but he can hear it.

“So was Aileen Wuornos.”

“Who?”

“She killed seven men. They made a movie about her.”

“Was it good?”

“Charlize Theron won an Oscar for playing her.”

“Charlize, huh?” Dean says. “I could be into that.”

Sam laughs to himself. “You probably wouldn’t like her in this one.” He’s about to elaborate when a chill runs through him. His next breath fogs up white in the dim light. “Shit,” he says, scrambling out of the grave.

Dean’s doing the same at his side, both of them going for the duffel. Sam’s got a hand on it when ice pours through his veins and suddenly he’s airborne.

He twists in midair but still lands hard, jarring one elbow and knocking the wind out of him. He spares a moment to be thankful that there aren’t any real headstones around to knock his head into as he wheezes. Above him is the deafening report of the shotgun and he feels a breeze as the salt round passes over him.

“Sam? You okay?”

“Yeah,” Sam groans, rolling to his side and levering himself up into a sitting position. “I’ll be fine.”

“You wanna play lookout while I finish this up?”

It’s Dean’s way of being nice, giving Sam a break from digging and Sam’s not too proud to take it. He gestures and Dean throws over the shotgun, which Sam catches in his good hand. His other arm is still sore.

Thankfully they were almost done. They don’t bury prisoners in expensive wooden coffins, so Dean complains loudly when his next shovelful hits bone. That was probably what drew the spirit to them.

Sam only has to shoot Williams once before Dean manages to uncover enough of the bones that he trusts the lighter fluid to do the rest. They sit at the edge of the grave and watch his remains burn down. Dean uses the light of the fire to check Sam over for any injuries and Sam lets him.

By the time the fire has burnt itself out Sam’s feeling well enough to help with filling the grave back up.

They’re heading back to the car with plenty of time before dawn. One benefit of winter hunts.

Sam badgers Dean into sleeping for a few hours, but Dean doesn’t want to waste money on a motel so they grab some blankets out of the trunk and crash in the Impala.

“Can’t believe it’s this cold in Florida,” Dean grumbles, wrapping the thick wool blanket around himself.

“Still pretty warm for December,” Sam points out. He’s sprawled out in the back seat.

“Yeah. Though it doesn’t really feel like Christmas without a few feet of snow and salt screwing with my baby.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll be headed back to Kansas by tomorrow night.”

“Great,” Dean mutters.

“You wanna pick up a tree or something?” Sam asks. “Might make it feel more like Christmas.”

“I’m not hauling a tree on top of the car, getting her all scratched up.” Dean sounds offended at the very idea. “Besides, don’t you still hate Christmas?”

It’s true that it hasn’t really been a great holiday for them. Sam still remembers finding out about hunting and monsters back when he was a kid, after days of waiting on John to come home for the holiday. And he can’t ever forget the last Christmas they had before Dean went to hell. “Yeah, but I thought it might be nice for all the other hunters. They probably haven’t had a real Christmas in a while.”

Dean hums non-committally, but Sam’s not imagining the tension that suddenly fills the air.

“What?” Sam asks.

“Nothing.”

“What’s your problem with them?” Sam asks, not bothering to elaborate with who he means by ‘them’. He knows Dean knows. “Seriously. You’ve been weird for months.”

“Shut up. No, I haven’t.” Dean says, closing his eyes and clearly trying to put an end to the conversation.

But Sam’s having none of it. “No, really, I want to know.”

Dean’s eyes snap open. “Sure, you want to know? I was only gone for a few weeks, Sam, and you turned our home into fucking Full House!”

It’s such a weird answer that Sam’s caught flat-footed. “What?”

“I come back and suddenly you’ve opened the Sam Winchester Home for Wayward Hunters.”

“That’s…”

“They’re constantly underfoot. I can’t even grab a beer without running into some douchebag making chili.”

“You love chili,” Sam tries to point out, but Dean’s on a roll.

“They’re in the archives, there’s always someone in the gun range. They’re everywhere. Strutting around, calling you ‘Chief’.”

“’Strutting’?” Sam echoes.

“I’m sick of them. It’s our house, Sam. It’s our house.”

It clicks, at least a little. When they’d first evacuated everyone from Apocalypse World most of the hunters had tried to find apartments or long-stay motels. With the reappearance of Michael, though, they’d retreated into the bunker out of fear of the archangel who had destroyed their planet. But Dean had missed all of that. Dean never really got a chance to get to know these hunters before they’d settled in. By the time he’d come back they’d set up a functional base, everyone had their place, they felt at home.

They’ve never had a home before. The closest thing they had was this car, and Dean was plenty territorial about that. Sam always assumed that Dean would be fine sharing the bunker because he was always the one making friends, the one bringing people into their ‘family’. But that didn’t necessarily translate into wanting them in his space.

Sam should’ve guessed that people in his home would irk Dean.

“Well, Michael’s been pretty quiet,” Sam ventures. “We could probably see about getting them some apartments.”

“You really think I’m that much of an asshole?” Dean snaps. “I’m not gonna kick them out when the bad guy is still out there, Sam.”

Which Sam figured, but he had to offer. His mind is spinning, trying to figure out how to fix this for Dean. There has to be something.

“Sam,” Dean says wearily. “Leave it.”

Suddenly this hunt, and Dean’s weird expression when Sam had tried to pass it off, makes sense. Sam had already suspected that Dean found the hunt, for the ghost of a serial killer, for Sam. After all, he’d done the same with Dean only a few weeks ago, found a kid who said he got beat up by an action figure to entice Dean out of his room, even though at the time it had been a stretch to think it might be a hunt. So, sure, Dean was trying to get him out of the bunker, away from the stress of planning a way to take down Michael.

But what he’d missed was that the point was so they could hunt it together. Just the two of them, no one else.

It was oddly touching.

“Hey, Dean...”

“Shut up, you big girl.”

Sam burrows down into his blanket, hiding his grin in the scratchy fabric.

 

* * *

 

It takes them nearly a full 24 hours to get back to the bunker, and Dean insists on driving straight through. Sam can see the lines on Dean’s face that say his back is killing him after sitting so long behind the wheel, but Dean’s nothing if not stubborn.

They stop for gas a few towns out of Lebanon. It’s nearly the next day and the gas station is an island of fluorescent light in a vast expanse of darkness. Sam goes into the store, picks up some water and a few snacks. They’re not short on junk food, but everything in there is so processed that it’ll keep for the next time.

Next time is something to consider. They haven’t been on many hunts, just the two of them, not really since the souped-up djinn last month.

Sam’s missed it.

They still need to take on Michael, and Sam’s not fooling himself, that won’t be easy. But if they can do it, if they succeed, then maybe things will calm down. Maybe it could be kind of like this again.

“You know,” Sam starts as they pull out of the gas station and back onto the road, “it’s Jack’s first real Christmas.”

“Yeah, I gotta say, not sure what to get a two-year-old Nephilim who just came back from the dead.”

“I was just thinking, after... if all this Michael stuff works out, maybe we can hit the road for a while.”

There’s a long silence, broken up only by the gentle _thumpthump_ of tires on cracked asphalt. Sam’s childhood lullaby, the sounds of home. When Sam chances a glance over, Dean’s smiling—but it’s distant, quiet.

“Yeah, Sammy. Sounds like a plan.”

 


End file.
